


No Longer

by Lynds



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Immortal Merlin, Reincarnation, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 02:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11151930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynds/pseuds/Lynds
Summary: Arthur has died, peacefully at the age of 86, having saved the world this time. But he leaves Gwen and Merlin behind again.





	No Longer

**Author's Note:**

> Some of you might know from my FrostIron WIP that I'm in Kenya, after my granny, Omi, got taken into hospital. She died yesterday afternoon, and this is my way of coping. Obviously a lot of Arthur is based on my granddad, who died in January this year, and a lot of Gwen is based on Omi. The things they talk about, the things they remember, all happened to my grandparents, who were pretty awesome people. The whole fic is based on conversations I had with Omi during my two visits to her this year, both after Gandang died, and in the last couple of days in the hospital.
> 
> The death scene may be upsetting, so I'm sorry, please don't read if hospitals and stuff are triggery. It was pretty upsetting to live, but I think it could have been much worse. This really is just catharsis for me, I wrote it between 12-2 this morning when I couldn't sleep!
> 
> So, yeah, mostly true. Apart from the whole invention of a world-saving alternative fuel. That's all Arthur. My Gandang was an industrial chemist, and algae are being used to produce fuel, but he never got into that area!

“What am I going to do without him, Merlin?” asked Gwen. 

Merlin gathered him up in his arms, stroking her silver hair with his endlessly young fingers. She clung tightly, then pulled back with a sad smile. “Come, you must be exhausted. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“That sounds perfect, thank you.”

“Did you get much sleep on the plane?”

He scrunched his nose up. “Nah, my legs are too long. Did some writing, though, read a book, it was good.”

“Have a nap, then, and we’ll go to the lawyer this afternoon.”

***

“Arthur organised everything. You know what he was like, had to be in charge. I don't even know how to write an email. What am I going to do without him?”

Merlin made her a fried egg and pretended not to see her wipe her eyes.

***

“Will you take his watch? He loved this watch, I think he’d like you to have it. Is there anything else you’d like of his?”

Merlin put the chunky gold watch on his wrist where it sat awkwardly. He smiled at it and thought of the old man his best friend had become, watching tennis on tv and teasing his grandchildren. “I just lost my watch last month,” he said. “It fell into a river I was crossing. I’d love to keep this, if you’re sure?”

“Of course, Merlin. He’d be glad it’s being used.”

“I’ll think of him every time I look at it,” he said. 

***

“Look,” she said. “Here’s a picture of us before we got engaged.”

“What?” laughed Merlin, taking it from her. “Well, that narrows the date it was taken down to 13 days, doesn't it?”

She smacked him with the back of her hand but didn't deny that she and Arthur had had a whirlwind courtship this time around.

He took the stiff paper, and traced the young smiling faces. “I remember this. You were the only one in that chemicals company who spoke English and your boss sent you out with the two English boys to show them a good time.” 

The photo showed a bar in Germany, a suited Arthur leaning towards a pretty, apple cheeked Gwen who was leaning on her hand to gaze at him rather than the camera. Merlin, sitting beside Arthur, looking exactly the same as he did now, was smirking at the camera knowingly.

“I remember him staggering back to the hotel on my shoulder that night saying he’d met the girl he was going to marry.”

Gwen smiled softly and looked back at the box of old photos.

“Is that Uther?” Merlin asked, leaning forward.

Gwen nodded. “He never did allow me into the house,” she said.

Arthur was born in London in 1930, Gwen in Munich later the same year. Merlin had felt it, a spark deep in his now-magicless bones, so full of hope, but surprised he hadn't got there in time for the Great War. He laughed bitterly just over a decade later as he stormed the beaches at Normandy, thinking Fate had gone and fucked it up again. Like it had when it left Merlin to walk the Earth while his and all other magic faded, and his body did not. He felt both furious and relieved that Arthur was too young to do more than collect plane wreckage and bomb fragments around the city, but mostly he just felt scared that the teenage boy would die in the blitz like so many others.

He’d always planned to stay away, at least until Arthur was a young adult, more Merlin’s apparent age. But then he found Mordred in Dachau during the liberation and he decided that Fate and everything could go fuck itself. He found Arthur and Leon in Shepherd’s Bush. ‘Hi, I’m Merlin,’ he said. ‘I’m immortal, and I used to be magic. We knew each other back when you were a king.’ Arthur laughed and laughed.

He didn't believe him for years, not really. He thought the stories were entertaining enough to keep him around through the chemistry degree, and the RAF, the trip to Germany and the fight with Uther. Arthur’s father had been old enough to fight in both wars, and refused to allow a German woman in his house, let alone into his family. Merlin had never been prouder of his friend when he told him that Gwen _would_ be in Arthur’s family, and Uther could choose if he wanted to be part of that or not. When he chose not, Merlin followed his king and queen to Kenya, to colonise the empire.

He touched the photo of little Morgana stealing her big sister Mithian’s mango, on the beach in Diani. Found family photos with teenage daughters, a middle aged couple, and Merlin, still in his twenties. He lifted one picture of an older Morgana, her eyes wide and uncertain, the smile already subdued. He wished he could have found a way to make her happy.

“Did they come to the funeral?” he asked.

Gwen shook her head. “I asked them not to. I didn't want everyone descending on me at the same time, and they’re all in England now. Morgana’s children came for a visit though.”

Merlin smiled and picked out a picture of Morgana’s son and daughter, Elyan and Elena, holding chickens under their arms, both under ten. “Elena has children of her own now, doesn't she? You great-granny, you.”

She nodded, her eyes lighting up. “Two lovely little girls,” she said, holding out a picture. “Alice and Helen - Helen _Guinevere_. As soon as I sell this flat I’m moving to England to be closer to them. Morgana and I are getting a house together.”

“That’ll be nice.” Won't it?

She nodded happily. “Now if only that lawyer would get a move on with the paperwork.

***

“He saved the world, didn't he?” she asked him one quiet evening as she lay on the sofa, pale and exhausted from a visit to the supermarket.

Merlin nodded. “They say without his algal fuel system that the carbon dioxide levels from fossil fuel combustion would have built up to a point where it might have started affecting the weather patterns by now. Ice caps would have started melting, storms would have got much worse, there would have been floods in some areas and droughts in others. The Middle East was on the brink of war with the USA over crude oil when he patented that system.”

“Imagine burning that old fashioned petrol even now,” she wondered. “What damage all that lead would have done to children’s brains.”

“But now the formula and method’s in the public domain, there are economists saying he singlehandedly eliminated fuel inequality,” he said, nudging her with his foot. “Yes, Gwen, he saved the world.” 

He stretched his fingers and felt magic flutter somewhere deep in his bones. It had also started returning, slowly.

***

“It’s pancreatic cancer,” they said. Merlin held Gwen’s hand and stroked the paper thin skin stretched over puffy, IV swollen flesh. The tiny spark of magic did nothing but tickle her fingers. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do. If you can fight off this infection and get off the oxygen and the drip, your grandson can take you to England, though, so you’ll be close to family at least.”

Gwen glared at the doctor, gasping the oxygen that hissed into her nose. They gave Merlin a sad half smile and left the hospital room. Merlin didn't bother to correct their assumption about his family connection.

“Call my lawyer,” she said, slurring the words and pulling all her energy forth to do the job. “I’m going to die here and I need to sort things out.”

She closed her eyes and let Merlin stare at her, feeling young and useless. When the lawyer arrived she could barely summon the energy to tell him the diagnosis. The man, almost as old as her, stroked her shoulder and told her she would get better.

***

“Would you like me to read to you?”

“I don't have my kindle or my glasses.”

“No, I said I’ll read to you. Pride and Prejudice or something. Or my quantum physics book if you really want. I’ll read, you can just listen, or sleep. Just so you can have someone talking to you and not have to reply.”

She shook her head and let the nurse feed her a piece of pawpaw. “No, I don't think so.”

“OK.”

***

Morgana’s ex husband, Gwaine, came for moral support, the only family member left in the country. Merlin offered to take him for a late lunch in a little Indian cafe in the plaza across town. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he said to the still figure on the bed, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. The bed was too high up, and he couldn't quite reach. He laughed.

“You can lower the side,” said the nurse, smiling as she inserted another IV.

“That’s ok,” he said, embarrassed, and held her hand instead.

“Thank you for coming to see me,” Gwen whispered, her eyes hooded.

“She’s struggling to breathe,” said Gwaine to the nurse with a frown. “Can you give her more oxygen?”

“Let me just check.” She turned the dial as Merlin stroked his thumb along the soft skin of Gwen’s hand. They watched her breathing even out.

“Better?”

She nodded. “It’s lovely of you both to visit me,” she repeated. Merlin wondered if she was hinting to them to leave, or if she truly wanted them to stay and felt guilty about it.

“Any time, Gwen. We’ll see you later, OK?” 

Merlin ordered mushroom and paneer at the cafe, and watched Gwaine squint though his thick glasses at the menu. “She’s a little better today, I think,” he said. “Yesterday she couldn't eat or drink, and she was barely awake at all. Today they took her off the drip, though they had to put her back on for the antibiotics.”

Gwaine twisted his lips. “The doctors were talking to Morgana on the phone about whether Gwen would want to be resuscitated, though,” he said gently. “This is just palliative care, it’s not going to get better.”

“I know that,” he said, swirling the straw in his mango lassi. “I do. But if she can get over this chest infection, then she might be well enough to fly. She wants to see those little girls again.”

That’s when the phone rang. “She’s critical.”

They raced back together, crossing chaotic lanes of traffic, dodging vendors and twisting ankles in potholes. Merlin burst into the room.

She was naked, modesty barely covered, unhooked from the machines, and with an orange tube in her mouth. A large group of people were standing at the foot of her bed, staring at him, looking guilty.

He knew she was gone. But there was that optimistic part of him that wanted them to tell him she was fine, that actually she had started breathing again, she didn't need the drip, she was just sleeping.

The doctors took him and Gwaine into another room to tell them that Gwen had stopped breathing half an hour ago. They had started CPR, but they had lost the pulse. Merlin cried. The doctor hugged him. Gwaine hugged Merlin, and cried as well, then stood at the window to call Morgana in England.

Merlin walked out into the hallway and watched the nurses bustle in and out of Gwen’s room. He called her friends, and managed not to cry on the phone too much, until they did. 

“She was in no pain,” said a nurse. “I was just talking to her. She said ‘don't worry about me, I’ll be fine,’ and then her eyes just…” she fluttered her eyes shut and Merlin smiled through fresh tears. Of course those would be her last words. 

“Would you like to see her?” He nodded and went into the quiet room. She didn't look real. Her face, in the two hours since he’d last kissed her cheek, had been turned to wax, and her skin was cold under his fingertips. 

“That’s not her,” he said softly.

He picked up the photo he’d tucked into some roses just that morning, and took it out. The nurse smiled gently at him. 

“This is who she was,” he said, handing her the picture of Gwen and Arthur in Germany. “I just...wanted you to know.”


End file.
